I suppose, and so
am I--and I love you."

"But how could you? When did you begin?"

"I could because I would, and there was no beginning. I was born that
way."

"You meant you have cared for me, as I have for you--always?"

"Not always, perhaps--but--well, it started in the churchyard, I think,
when I gave you Samuel. Then when I met you again it might have been
just the way you look--for oh, Ben, did you ever discover that you are
splendid to look at?"

"A magnificent animal," I retorted.

She blushed, recognising the phrase. "To tell the truth, though, it
wasn't the way you look," she went on impulsively, "it was, I think,--I
am quite sure,--the time you pushed that wheel up the hill. I adored
you, Ben, at that moment. If you'd asked me to marry you on the spot I'd
have responded, 'Yes, thank you, sir,' as one of my great-grandmothers
did at the altar."

"And to think I didn't even know you were there. I'd forgotten it, but I
remember now the General told me I made a spectacle of myself."

"Well, I always liked a spectacle, it's in my blood. I like a man, too,
who does things as if he didn't care whether anybody was looking at him
or not--and that's you, Ben."

"It's not my business to shatter your ideals," I answered, and the next
minute, "O Sally, how is it to end?"

"That depends, doesn't it," she asked, "whether you want to marry me or
my maiden aunts?"

"Do you mean that you will marry me?"

"I mean, Ben, that if you aren't so obliging as to marry me, I'll pine
away and die a lovelorn death."

"Be serious, Sally."

"Could anything on earth be more serious than a lovelorn death?"

I would have caught her back to my breast, but eluding my arms, she
stood poised like the fleeting-spirit of gaiety in the little path.

"Will you promise to marry me, Ben Starr?" she asked.

"I'll promise anything on earth," I answered.

"Not to talk any more about my stooping to a giant?"

"I won't talk about it, darling, I'll let you do it."

"And if you're poor you'll let me be poor too? And if you're rich you'll
give me a share of the money?"

"Both--all."

"And you'll make a sacrifice for me--as the General said George
wouldn't--whenever I happen particularly to want one?"

"A million of them--anything, everything."

She came a step nearer, and raised her smiling lips to mine.

"Anything--everything, Ben, together," she said.

Presently we walked back slowly, hand in hand, through the maze of box.